Drupal installation on windows tutorial

Submitted by jinlusuh on Wed, 08/04/2010 - 23:59

This is a guide on how to setup website and configure Drupal content management system on windows. You need to have web server, mysql and php installed in your computer before begin the Drupal installation.

Download latest Drupal content management system from drupal official website. There are two versions of Drupal active at the moment, Drupal 5 and Drupal 6. Active means that Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 still maintained and supported by Drupal developer and modules developer.

Which drupal version should I use? Drupal 5 is the older version while the Drupal 6 is the latest stable released. The first time user should choose Drupal 6 since it's an upgraded version of Drupal 5. Drupal 5 will be stop maintained once Drupal 7 is released (not confirm however that's what happened to Drupal 4).

In order to install Drupal content management system in your local computer, you need to have php, mysql database and web server installed. The easiest way is to install XAMPP, which is a package of Apache web server, MySQL database server, PHP and PERL compiled by apachefriends.org team. It's available in executable file(installer) for windows, Mac OS X and also for Linux. A XAMPP tutorial can be found in Setup local web server for windows - Install, configure and testing xampp.

Extract Drupal file(drupal-6.xx.tar.gz) and copy the extracted file to the web server directory (windows in c:\xampp\htdocs\). You can use 7zip to extract the file. Rename the extracted file from drupal-6.xx to your domain name or website name. See xampp tutorial(mention above) on how to configure web server or if you need help on where to copy the drupal file.

Before we begin installing drupal website, copy the 'xampp\htdocs\drupal\sites\default\default.settings.php' file to 'xampp\htdocs\drupal\sites\default\settings.php'. The 'settings.php' file must be writable. The 'xampp\htdocs\drupal\sites\default\files' folder also must be writeable. Since we are using windows, the permission is enabled by default. So don't worry about the permission bit.

2) Choose language. We are going to use 'English language' for this example:

3) Setup database:

4) Drupal installation error:

Warning: fopen(./sites/default/default.settings.php)[function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\includes\install.inc on line 188

Warning: Cannot modify header information - header already sent by(output started at C:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\includes\install.inc:188) in C:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\includes\install.inc on line 618

Warning: Cannot modify header information - header already sent by(output started at C:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\includes\install.inc:188) in C:\xampp\htdocs\drupal\includes\install.inc on line 619

If you get this error, probably you renamed the 'default.settings.php' to 'settings.php' in previous step. To fix this, you just copy 'settings.php' and name it 'default.settings.php' so that you have both, the 'default.settings.php' and 'settings.php'.

5) Configure Drupal site. Site name: - Give your website a name. It should be something related to the whole content in the website (in the future). Site e-mail address: - The main email address that you would use for this website.

6) Setup Drupal administrator account. The administrator account has complete access to the site; it will automatically be granted all permissions and can perform any administrative activity. This will be the only account that can perform certain activities, so keep its credentials safe. Username: - Enter user name for administrator account. Just give a single name without white space. The e-mail address already automatically fill-in during previous step. Password: - Key in a password for the administrator account. To get a 'Password strength: High', you need to mix your password characters with Upper case, letters and special characters (symbols). Make sure you get the 'Passwords match: Yes'. Write these informations and keep them safe.

7) Server settings. Normally, there's nothing to do here. The 'Clean URLs' is very important for SEO and it should be enable by default.

8) Drupal installation complete:

Drupal mail server error warning:

Don't worry about the email server warning for now. We successfully completed the Drupal installation. Click link to the website or type the website address(localhost/drupal) to go to the new drupal website. It's time to setup the new website.

Will be continue on the second part. Too many screenshot pictures make page loading slow.